Italy's Commedia del Presidente
English original of article published today in Italian by La Stampa, on the Italian parliament's decision to hold Sergio Mattarella hostage as head of state
Viewed from abroad, the great Quirinale game has been a perfect Italian story: an exotic drama of Silvio Berlusconi’s campaign and withdrawal, then a series of Machiavellian intrigues, then the theatre of endless votes involving blank sheets and an array of names being thrown around, and finally an ending happy enough to leave foreigners feeling safe and assured. If the world was happy during 2021 with Sergio Mattarella as President of the Republic and Mario Draghi as President of the Council [ie, prime minister], why should it feel any differently during 2022?
The answer is that at least for the time being it shouldn’t. Foreigners writing or thinking about Italy are often itching for the chance to quote or paraphrase il Gattopardo [The Leopard, and its famous “Everything must change so that nothing changes”], and may have felt disappointed not to be able to do so. But then we found that Giorgia Meloni [leader of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party] had got there first, with her tweet saying “siamo al ‘nulla cambi, perche nulla cambi’ ” [Nothing should change, so that nothing changes]. The fact that nothing has changed sounds like a good thing – if it is true.
On the surface, everything is reassuring. Mario Draghi will still represent Italy at international summits and give it a stable, pro-EU, pro-NATO and even Atlanticist foreign policy for a further year. He and his government will still be handling the PNRR and so spending the next tranches of the €190 billion of EU money that the European Commission is worrying about. Moreover, once France has elected its president on April 24th Mr Draghi may be able to continue the effort he began with Emmanuel Macron to press for a renovation of the EU’s fiscal rules – if President Macron is re-elected, of course.
Just as important, at least for those in international business, Mr Draghi and his government will now have some more time to implement the reforms in the justice system and the public administration that were at last begun in 2021. It was never credible that such fundamental reforms could be successfully done in just one year, even helped by the EU funds.
More time can only be good, from an international point of view. It raises the chance that the rather sceptical view taken of Italy by most foreign investors might change, gradually. It raises an even better chance that Mr Draghi and his ministers can do some effective public communication so as to convince the many sceptical Italians that reforms are necessary for the country, especially in digitalisation, in public administration and in the ecological transition.
All this is positive. But to thoughtful international observers it will still raise several important questions. The first concerns whether Giorgia Meloni is right: has nothing really changed? The second concerns the general election that must take place by June 1st 2023: when will the electoral campaigning really begin? The third, inevitably, concerns the international community’s great hero, Mario Draghi: for how long will he really remain in Palazzo Chigi? For the fourth question must always be there too: what, or who, is going to come next?
It may take several months before these questions become raised widely. But that depends on what happens in Rome, as that first Meloni response starts to be explored.
For it is clear that some things have changed, while others have been brought into a brighter light. Berlusconi’s campaign allowed the international media to write long profiles resurrecting bunga bunga. But what it actually showed, once fantasy had been replaced by reality, is that one basic assumption about Italian politics is not as secure as it seemed: instead of the three centre-right parties being far more united than the centre-left, they too have actually proved to be divided and the process has left behind it a lot of bitterness.
From an international point of view, this could again be positive: when scare stories have been written about Italy in recent years, they have always had right-wing populists at their core, with the assumption that the centre-right looks destined to win power in the next general election. The need now to question that assumption may be reassuring.
Yet it will soon also lead to questions about for how long a main part of that centre-right, the Lega, will remain in the broad Draghi coalition, if Matteo Salvini is to compete effectively with Giorgia Meloni. The battle within the right looks likely to be one of the main political stories that will feature in the international media during 2022. For it will determine the answers to all those other questions.
The Quirinale game did also expose divisions within the centre-left, and the apparent impossibility of getting any coherent political strategy from the Five Star Movement in particular. But this was not new, nor, from an international point of view, will it be very interesting from now on. For the outside world, Five Star now looks like a relic of history, its members merely wanting to survive long enough to collect their parliamentary pensions.
No, for now the real issues that outsiders will watch are on the centre-right: how Lega and Forza Italia will behave inside the Draghi government, how Fratelli d’Italia will capitalise on its position as the sole opposition, and when the electoral campaign will get going. We know that Mr Draghi has some more time, and that can only be good. But we don’t know how much more, nor how effective his coalition can be. From now on, that issue will gradually rise in importance, in international markets and among the wider international community.
It’s wonderful It’s marvelous that things will remain the same, -and saving the Italian state the cost of Palazzo exchanges - thank you making sense of it all!
excellent panorama with acute inside view